Co‐creating learning: insights from complexity theory

Abstract

PurposeRecent advances in the interactive technologies have transformed the way today's organizations and their different stakeholders learn. Now, because of the increasing learning requirements, neither these organizations nor their stakeholders can afford to be too self‐focused while learning; instead, they collaborate and learn together. Existing theories of learning are not sufficient to explain this complex learning “co‐creation”. Therefore, this paper aims to explore how different actors of a value network co‐create emergent creativity, learning and adaptability in the presence of imposed administrative control and coordination.Design/methodology/approachThe approach adopted in the paper draws on human complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspectives.FindingsWithin the value networks, the emergent and informal constraints imposed by interdependent relationships coexist with the imposed administrative controls. Despite being valuable for planning and coordination, these administrative controls do not foster learning co‐creation, while, within the value networks, the informal emergent dynamics imposed by interdependent relationships, i.e. adaptive leadership, are crucial for co‐creation of emergent learning and creativity. An organization can enable leaders who foster co‐creation of learning, creativity and adaptability; and the interactive technologies boost the adaptive and enabling leadership and support the co‐creation of learning, creativity and adaptability within the value networks.Originality/valueThe research represents the first effort to explore learning “co‐creation” within a value network.

Customer and employee co-creation of radical service innovations

“…Ordanini and Parasuraman (2011) found that greater collaboration with customers leads to greater volume of innovation in NSD programs, but did not improve the radicalness of the innovations. However, the work of Desai (2010) suggests that the complexity theory might explain why prior research has found no direct effect of customer co-creation on radicalness of service innovations. NSD is a value network, and greater interaction of resources leads to adaptation of the perspectives of diverse actors and ultimately to new concepts, learning and more complex knowledge.…”

“…David Kelly, founder of IDEO, a leading design firm and developer of many radically innovative products and services, has suggested that a firm needs to come up with a lot of ideas to find the one concept that leads to the successful radical innovation. Complexity theory applied to learning co-creation (Desai, 2010) suggests that the synergies of a complex adaptive system generate more ideas and yield more creative solutions. Higher levels of NSD process complexity have the characteristics of a complex adaptive system, and the synergistic interactions of the diverse operant resources in the development process produce more radically innovative services.…”

Cocriação uma Ferramenta para oAumento da Competitividade e Desempenho Organizacional: Uma Revisão de Literatura

“…O conceito de cocriação aparece em vários contextos orientada a empresa, como virtual (Fuller, 2010), aprendizagem (Desai, 2010), desenvolvimento de produtos e inovação (Ramaswamy, 2011;Rowley et al, 2007).…”

Electronic Human Resource Management Strategies for Atypical Employment

“…Especially due to the given flexibility, every actor can be easily replaced. Therefore it will become important that those technological relationships reflect the relational type of leadership and are based on a many-to-many (m:n) logic (Desai, 2010).…”